"Here is an extraordinary excavation from the buried history of the Downtown NYC scene: the unreleased, self-titled Transmission EP, recorded in 1981-82. Comprised of Jonathan Kane and Daniel Galliduani, the duo is one-half of the original version of the behemoth band Swans. Transmission both preceded and ran concurrent with the formation of Swans (Michael Gira was enough of a fan that he mixed Transmission's few live shows), and much of their material evolved into Swans tracks, including the standout 'Weakling.' Unclassifiable within any conventional genre, it recalls the improvisation and complex, trance-inducing beats of North African music while adding a crust of no wave bluster and enough percussive artillery to sink a small island. Galliduani, whose saxophone is so heavily treated and processed that it sounds like a wall of guitars, lays down drones then adds weird, fierce, Eastern-tinged polyphonics; meanwhile Kane is a frenzied dervish, generating complex cross-tempos and rhythmic subdivision. Transmission is not only an absolute must-have for fans of either Swans or Jonathan Kane's bruising present-day efforts (not to mention his fine work with Rhys Chatham and La Monte Young), but an essential missing link from that Lower East Side scene of yesteryear."